


Ginger

by Aloysia_Virgata



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Cancer Arc, Gen, Post-I Want to Believe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 09:30:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3129596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aloysia_Virgata/pseuds/Aloysia_Virgata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Dana Scully cut her hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ginger

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Leucocrystal and Paigehunt for the kind words and amazingly fast beta turnaround time.

***  
  
I.  
  
She winces when the door opens, peering into the hallway. “Missy?”  
  
“Hey!” calls her sister’s voice. A slam, and then footsteps echoing as she moves through the apartment. “Come on out and let’s see how -- oh, Christ. Dana, what the fuck did you do to your head?”  
  
Dana glares at her sister’s artfully tumbled curls, her gauzy floral dress. “It’s not _that_ bad.” Is it? She touches the patchy hank of hair that’s meant to be sideswept bangs.  
  
Missy sighs, edging past her into the bedroom to inspect closer. “It is. It really, really is. You look like a calico cat.”  
  
Dana bristles but knows it’s true. Her shoulders slump. “It was supposed to be Warmest Toffee.”  
  
Her sister waves a ringed hand dismissively. “People pay good money for your natural hair color, you realize. I don’t know why you’d dye it.” She tosses her own auburn head for effect, beaded necklace clicking. “And bangs! Dana, you can’t just start whacking away at your hair like that. Thank goodness you had the sense to leave them fairly long so I have something to work with. And what did you use? Poultry shears?”  
  
Surgical scissors. “Never mind that. Can you fix it or not?”  
  
“Of course I can fix it. Come on, let’s get you into the bathroom.”  
  
Dana follows her meekly, grateful that at least she had someone to call. Her tight GS-10 budget does not allow for emergency trips to the salon, not with what she’s shelling out on her new post-Academy wardrobe.  
  
Missy steers her to the closed toilet to sit down before shrugging her tote bag into the sink. She rummages through it for scissors and clips, then removes a paisley smock that she fastens around Dana’s neck. “Tell me about the brown. The first brown. The decent-looking one.”  
  
“One of those ‘lasts through 24 shampoos’ things.” She’d been unwilling to firmly commit to life as a brunette, and the results had only somewhat masked her stubbornly red hair with a drab chestnut.  
  
“Okay, that’s good. Now, what’s the deal with this shit?”  
  
The dye had been on sale at CVS and she’d had visions of something richly hued and elegant like the woman in the picture. Something that would transform her into a sophisticated professional instead of The Short Redheaded Newbie. The results are… unfortunate. But the fact remains that she needs some serious mojo to free herself from Fox Mulder’s career-sucking paranormal vortex.  
  
“Permanent,” Dana says. She bends down to fish the packaging from the trash and wordlessly hands it over.  
  
Missy scrutinizes the color on the box, then squints at her sister. “Short, blue eyes, pointy nose, disapproving expression, FBI agent, spends all day in the basement with a crazy man. You can’t pull it off without being ironic. And you’re too annoyingly earnest to be ironic.”  
  
The blush is hot on her cheeks. “You don’t really think I’m trying to-“  
  
“Doesn’t matter. Other people will. I mean, it won a boatload of Oscars and everything.” Missy pulls out a few bottles, squirts them into a bowl, and mixes everything into a thick paste with the scent of rotten eggs. “I’m going to cut it while this brews and then we’ll start stripping out the color. Your hair’s probably going to be fried for a while, but I’ll give you some stuff for it. And Dana?”  
  
“Hm?” Her eyes cross as the scissors loom millimeters from her nose.  
  
“Get better clothes. You look frumpy. No one automatically thinks ugly girls are smart. But everybody thinks beautiful ones who try and hide the fact are idiots.” She runs a comb through Dana’s hair, finding the part.  
  
Dana had no idea her sister considers her beautiful. She is childishly pleased. “I have to dress professionally for work. Suits and heels. I can’t swan around in kicky little sundresses like some people.” Honestly, she doesn’t know the first thing about fashion and lets her mother go shopping with her for work wear as a conciliatory gesture. She wore hand-me-downs as a kid, jeans as an undergrad, scrubs and sweats through med school and the Academy. The bulk of her new clothes had only their price tags and her mother’s approval to recommend them.  
  
“Tilt your chin down for a sec. Yeah, hold it like that.” Missy twists up a few sections of hair and starts snipping. “Professional, fine. But buttoned up like a Victorian spinster? You have a nice little body. It wouldn’t kill you to let people know. Is your nutjob partner hot at least?”  
  
Dana groans and doesn’t mention that Mulder has seen her nice little body in mortifying detail. The last thing she wants to do is give him daily reminders of her indiscretion.  
  
“Been a dry spell since Jack, right?” Missy prods, cutting off a large chunk of hair. “I never did tell anyone about your penchant for sleeping with those in an instructatorial capacity, you wench. So, is he?”  
  
She actually has to stop and think because Mulder’s physical presence is so secondary to his obsessions. “He’s very attractive,” she concedes. “But he’s not my type. And he calls me Scully. But you know, maybe I should give him _your_ number. I think you two would have a lot to talk about.” She can envision them in a seedy diner, one-upping each other’s whacked out theories.  
  
“Don’t be a bitch when I have the scissors, little girl.”  
  
Dana laughs before reflecting further on her situation. “Thing is, they want me to ‘assess’ him. He’s practically a legend, Missy. His theories are crazy, but he’s also brilliant. I feel like I’m being set up or tested or something. Sell him out and I’m too dumb to recognize genius. Agree with him and I’m a gullible naïf.”  
  
Missy makes a non-committal noise, her scissors snapping at a few wisps around Dana’s face. “There! It’s not perfect, but it’s way better. I took some of the weight off too so it won’t just hang there and make you look horsey.”  
  
”Gee, thanks. Can I look?”  
  
“No. Not until I fix the color.”  
  
Cold, sulfurous glop gets smeared over her head, making her nose wrinkle. It burns and itches. She reaches up to scratch and gets her hand slapped for her troubles.  
  
“Leave it alone. This will take a while to process, so just deal with it.” Missy brushes errant hair onto the tarp. “Up you get.”  
  
Her head feels twice its normal size as she walks to the living room, taking care not to smear whatever hideous chemicals she’s soaking in on the walls. She makes it to the couch, sitting bolt upright to keep clear of the upholstery. Missy settles next to her, pulling a pack of Camels and a Zippo from her pocket.  
  
“Oh, come on, don’t smoke in here. The smell is so hard to get out. All this stuff is new.” Dana hates the pleading note in her voice, as though she’s playing house and begging her big sister not to ruin the game.  
  
The lighter flicks, the tip of the cigarette crackling as Missy inhales. “The reek of your head will kill it, don’t worry.” She taps another out of the pack, offering it in her palm.  
  
Dana shakes her head and sighs in resignation. There are certain things one has to let slide with Missy, and her contempt for rules is chief among them. She focuses instead on the crick in her neck and thinks of Jack Willis’s capable hands working out the tension in her muscles after a long day of ice fishing. The relationship was headed nowhere and she ended it, but God, it had been nice have a warm body at night. Someone to embarrass her in a restaurant on her birthday, show up with lasagna and wine on occasion. She imagines Mulder in a dim apartment somewhere. Does he have a girlfriend? A cat? A Boston fern? It hardly seems possible that he should attach himself to a living thing, focused as he is on the intangible. She glances about her magazine-tidy home and makes a mental note to schedule a night out before long.  
  
Missy’s flicking the lighter on and off, passing the tips of her fingers through the flame.  
  
Sometimes Dana longs for her sister’s easy way with things, flitting from bed to bed and job to job. Working to pay her bills and little more. Not too proud to sell hamsters or wait tables or run the Ferris wheel at the state fair. Unimpressed by title or tenure.  
  
Dana jerks as the lighter sparks before her eyes.  
  
Missy laughs. “You look so damn tense all the time. I would have brought a joint to help you relax but I honestly think you’d arrest me.” She winks, setting the cigarettes and lighter atop a coaster on the spotless coffee table.  
  
Dana rolls her eyes. “Dad hasn’t got the place bugged, you know. You don’t have to try and be shocking to piss him off and get a reaction.” She twists her fingers in her lap to keep from scratching her scalp.  
  
Missy plays with her beads, looking thoughtful. “Speaking of pissing Dad off, how’s the FBI these days, Doc?”  
  
“Dammit, Missy. I’d expect that from Bill but not from you. Not everything is an act of rebellion against Dad. I’m being true to myself with this, hard as it’s been.” You’d think he’d be proud to have an FBI agent in the family, but her father is distressingly outdated on certain aspects of women’s lib.  
  
Missy takes a long drag before puffing smoke rings at the ceiling. “Don’t misunderstand me. I have no doubts about your integrity when it comes to this career. But just… if you’re going to give up medicine and sink your relationship with Dad, make sure you’re doing it on your own terms, okay? Don’t trash your hair to fake being some chick on a box and when you have the money, buy clothes you actually like instead of what Mom tells you get. And if your partner’s right, tell your boss that. And if he’s wrong, well, you’re the one who has to keep him honest.”  
  
Dana mulls this over. For all the ways in which their paths have diverged, there is a common hub. She squeezes her sister’s knee in thanks, then helps herself to a cigarette from the table.  
  
  
II.  
  
“So! You said short on the phone, love, but how short is short? Mia Farrow short or like a cute pageboy or what?” Margie snaps her gum and fluffs Scully’s hair with her fingers. “I can totally see you with a sweet little bob, Dana. Right to your chin or so.”  
  
Scully fights a rise of panic when Margie’s fingers press against her neck to indicate what she has in mind. _Get it together_ , she orders herself. _Donnie Pfaster is in federal prison. He did not escape and disguise himself as your hairdresser to strangle you at a salon._ Though she must admit, the dreadful irony of the idea almost makes it seem plausible.  
  
“Uh, you know, I’m not really sure. It just… it felt like time for a change.” She flips through the rumpled magazine on her lap again, eyes darting around the pages without seeing anything. “I’m nervous about something drastic, I guess.” She forces a chuckle.  
  
Margie points at a Pantene ad featuring a woman with a sleek pixie cut. “That’s cute. What do you say? I can make it a bit longer if you’re not feeling brave enough yet.”  
  
Scully considers it, but it’s only seconds before she hears his voice again, wafting through her brain like a dirty fog.  
  
 _I know this house, girly girl. There's nowhere to hide._  
  
Nowhere to hide.  
  
What was she thinking? If she cuts her hair, they’ll know. They’ll know Donnie Pfaster got inside her head like a disease. She’ll be one of those sad, crazy stories they whisper about at the Academy. Watch yourself or you’ll wind up like Dana Scully. Let a case get to her and snap! Fell apart just like that. Now she’s a security guard at the White Flint mall.  
  
“Sooooo?” Margie drawls.  
  
Scully stares longingly at the picture. “You know,” she says, the words marbles in her mouth, “I actually… I just don’t think I’m ready after all. How about we keep it to a trim today?”  
  
Margie pouts. “Aw, you never let me do anything fun. That’s it, really? Just a trim?”  
  
Scully swallows hard, fixated on her ragged cuticles, her chipped polish. “And a manicure,” she says steadily. “I really need to have my nails done.”  
  
  
III.  
  
  
Scully feels like a runaway in his hall, sneaking from realities she doesn’t want to deal with. She can’t deny that she’d played on his guilt to talk him into doing this, but desperate times and all that. Seized by a perverse sense of humor, she knocks _shave and a haircut_ on the door.  
  
“Hilarious,” he says darkly when he opens it. He looks both wary and resigned as she slips under his arm. The door shuts behind her.  
  
She digs into her coat pocket for the clippers, then wordlessly passes them over.  
  
Mulder holds the gadget with evident distaste. “Are you sure you want this?”  
  
It takes all of her restraint to yell that no, she does not want this. That not wanting this is the goddamn point of her being here, but instead she nods and shrugs her coat onto the couch.  
  
She’s wearing yoga pants and a loose t-shirt. All of her clothes are loose anymore, but she wanted to look particularly frail and compromised, to make him see that she has to have this one act of control before it’s too late. She did stop short of wearing last year’s Komen Race shirt, though. Best not to overdo it.  
  
“Where do you want me?” she asks, ceding some of the decision to him for form’s sake.  
  
Mulder’s lip curls in amusement, but he swallows the remark and scans his apartment with a helpless expression. “How about in here? I’ll just put a sheet down and get you a chair.”  
  
No mirror in the living room. Which is best for both of them.  
  
“That works,” she says, and gazes at his fish tank while he sets up, letting her eyes drift out of focus and turn the fish into amorphous blobs of color like headlights in the rain.  
  
“Okay then,” he says, gesturing at the chair he’s placed over a wrinkled blue sheet on the floor. It looks like an interrogation chamber in the murky light. No sense in brightening things up, she supposes. It’s not like they’re going for precision.  
  
She takes the seat, hands pressed between her knees. Mulder drapes a towel over her neck and shoulders, tucking it into her collar with his long, careful fingers. Then the clippers buzz to life in his hand, and the full impact of what she’s asked him to do slams into her like a truck.  
  
“Oh, God,” she whispers. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t… I shouldn’t… I can do this myself. I’m sorry.” She starts to rise, but his hand is firm on her shoulder.  
  
“It’s okay,” he says, and there is so much kindness in his voice that it might shatter her. “Just sit still so I don’t scalp you or anything.”  
  
Scully bites her lip, shoulders hunched.  
  
His touch is light at her neck, gently lifting the hair away as he slides the clippers against her scalp. She winces. It doesn’t hurt, but the drone against her ears makes her think of wasps.  
  
A section of hair hits the sheet with a quiet sound, the air cold and tingling on skin that hasn’t been bare in thirty-four years. No going back now, unless she decides to sport a Mohawk.  
  
Mulder, in that eerie way of his, seems to have honed in on this thought. “Between the shaved head and the tattoo, you’re going to look downright punk, Scully. Maybe I’ll get my nose pierced and we can start a band.”  
  
It’s the first time he’s mentioned the tattoo since that hideous morning in the office, and she’s grateful he’s finally shot the last elephant in the room. “Peter, Paul, and Mulder,” she suggests, gritting her teeth as hair falls to the ground with snow-soft noises. But it’s better like this. Better on her terms than to continue watching soggy clumps of it clog up her drain, trying desperately to mask the thinning with curlers and mousse.  
  
“Not very hardcore,” Mulder remarks, moving to the top of her head. “I was thinking something more like Dana and The Destroyers. I’m going to be the drummer. Wear nothing but a kilt to entice the ladies and more discriminating gentlemen.”  
  
She snorts at this as the clippers blaze a cool trail above her right ear. “I’m hardly lead singer material.”  
  
“Just wail and scream a lot about how much you hate The Man. And hey, this look worked like a charm for Sinead O’Connor, so you’ve at least got one other bald Irish success story to cling to. I’d leave the Pope out if it though, or your mom’ll be pissed.”  
  
“I’ll remember that, thanks.”  
  
There’s a final buzz at her collar, then silence. “All done,” Mulder says, smoothing a hand over her shorn head. It’s weirdly intimate.  
  
 _No one has ever touched this skin before_ , she thinks. _Not even me_. She’s terrified to see herself. It’s so safe here, joking with Mulder in the shadows. Work is going to be hell.  
  
Mulder takes the towel off and shakes it, stray hairs wafting around her. He blows on the back of her neck to dislodge a few more, making her shiver. Then he walks around her to inspect his handiwork. She sees the flash of sorrow in his eyes, but he buries it quickly. “You really need to call Skinner and ask him how to wash and wax this thing.”  
  
Her stomach lurches, nausea churning through her like a corkscrew. Scully doubles over, breathing slowly through her nose, and Mulder’s on his knees beside her.  
  
“What can I get you?” he whispers. He knows about the chemo, about what it does to her. She had to tell him because he was starting to suspect bulimia.  
  
She grips his fingers too hard. “Just stay,” she murmurs through dry lips. “Just stay right here.”  
  
*  
  
Scully leans over the edge of her bed and vomits into the plastic trash can before she’s fully awake. After the gagging subsides, she staggers from her bed to the bathroom and rinses her mouth with lukewarm water. Her reflection shows bloodshot eyes in a pale face, a tumble of brittle copper hair. She touches her hand to the mirror, wishing for the third night in a row she had the guts to bring him the clippers.  
  
  
IV.  
  
  
“Bababababa!” William calls from the high chair. He has run out of cheese cubes.  
  
“No more cheese. It’ll make your tummy sick,” Scully says. She offers him a bowl of watermelon chunks. William looks suspicious, but begins cramming them stickily into his mouth.  
  
When he’s finished, Scully gets a damp cloth to clean off the juice. “Show Mama your hands,” she says. William proudly displays ten pudgy fingers. Scully smiles at him, circling his wrist with her thumb and forefinger.  
  
She has more than enough. The braid in her hair is thinner than a pencil, secured at either end by the tiny rubber bands orthodontists give out. She clips it easily with the thread snips in her sewing kit, then rubs her thumb over the spiky patch of stubble it leaves behind.  
  
Scully threads a needle with clear plastic line. She starts to sing Baidin Fheilimi, just like her grandmother used to do when she and her siblings were small. She takes one tiny hand again, singing about Feidhlim's lively little fishing boat as she sews the braid into a circlet about her son’s wrist.  
  
William is intent on what she’s doing, watching and listening. He stays very still.  
  
She manages not to poke him with the needle, not to cut him when she trims the ends. And she manages not to cry, not even when the little boat wrecks on the shore of Tory with Feidhlim and all the fish inside.  
  
  
V.  
  
She throws her napkin down and storms from the table, scarcely waiting for Skinner to pull the front door shut.  
  
Mulder catches up and grabs her by the shoulder. “We have to go,” he says sharply. “You know we do.”  
  
“Don’t tell me what I know,” she snaps, going into the kitchen where she can slam breakable things around.  
  
He follows her. “Oh, well, you spent years denying everything you’d seen, so I figure you could use a reminder now and again.”  
  
Scully thrills at the rising anger in his voice. He was calm through dinner, even though he saw her white-knuckled when Skinner had begun laying out the reason for this evening’s visit. It’ll be a fair fight now, both of them wound up and furious. “Do you ever stop?” she demands, wringing out a dish towel. “With the martyr complex? Do you ever stop trying to save everybody?”  
  
“That’s funny coming from you. You spend all day throwing starfish back into the sea when you know a tsunami’s on the way. What’s the point?”  
  
The edge of the counter digs into her back. “The point is that I don’t think I’m an action hero. The point is that I help where I can and don’t try to delude myself about the impossible.” She shakes her head. “You’re pushing fifty, Mulder, and this isn’t a video game. I mean, what are you envisioning? You’ll swoop in there, save the kid, and blast the aliens out of the sky with some top secret laser ray the government’s been developing? Is that what you thought?” Her laugh is so bitter it makes her sick.  
  
Mulder watches her, his eyes accusing and accused. Something inside her knows all bets are off, and her stomach clenches in anticipation.  
  
“What did you think, Scully? That you could just ship William off somewhere and this would all go away? Did you even think at _all_?”  
  
It’s the cruelest thing he’s ever said to her, and she actually has to will herself not to hit him. But the truth is that some part of her has been waiting seven years to hear him say it, and there’s a dreadful kind of relief.  
  
“No,” she says when the shock dissipates. “No, I didn’t think. I just impulsively sent my baby off to the… the _Kents_ because it seemed like so much goddamned fun at the time!” She’s shouting in his face now and doesn’t care. Hates him, hates the stupid beard that he’s grown back. Hates Skinner.  
  
Hates herself.  
  
Seconds stretch between them, unbearably heavy. She looks away at last, gazing out the window at the henhouse, the dried husks of her summer garden. There are fall seedlings in the greenhouse.  
  
“I know you’re scared,” Mulder begins in a quiet voice. He looks worn out. “I am too. But Scully, we have to try. If this boy is William, if what Skinner says is true, then we have a chance to get him back. And to help put an end to this thing we fought against for so long. But I can’t do it without you.” He reaches out to smooth her long hair from her face and she jerks back.  
  
“Don’t,” she chokes out. “Don’t treat me like I’m broken.”  
  
“I don’t think you’re broken,” Mulder says, and the love in his eyes makes her ache. He cocks his finger and thumb into a gun, taking the Weaver stance. “That’s why I need you to cowboy up and help an old man save the fucking day.”  
  
Scully laughs a little, even when the tears come, and brushes her fingers over the awful beard. She walks from the kitchen to the stairs, heading up to their bedroom as she replays the evening in her head.  
  
Ever since the Father Joe affair, they’ve been on friendly terms with Skinner. They have dinner together once a month or so, and he occasionally tries to wheedle them back to Washington. Solicits their opinions on cases at times, but it’s always been easy and casual.  
  
Until tonight.  
  
Until he said the two magic words guaranteed to fire them both up. Aliens. And William.  
  
Turns out that in their exile, a covert international effort had gotten underway to develop both vaccines and weaponry against the planned colonization. Their assistance, expertise, and blood samples have been requested as the resistance project advances into Phase Two. She assumes the case last winter was merely a pretense to absolve them and now cynically wonders if Skinner’s prior visits had any sincerity at all, or were merely to win their trust back.  
  
“It’s real,” Skinner had said, chasing a caper around his plate with a fork. “International agencies are finally willing to openly acknowledge – within top secret circles, of course – that this thing is happening. Now that they’ve got the infrastructure in place and are pooling their knowledge, they’re looking for people to run the cooperative teams. You’ve been in high demand for a while, but it took some time to convince our government. And I wasn’t even sure you’d be willing to listen after… everything.” He was looking down as he said this.  
  
Scully walks past the aquarium and into the bathroom, not wanting to think about what had come next.  
  
“So why now?” Mulder had asked conversationally, sipping his wine as though they were discussing something sane.  
  
And Skinner, still not meeting their eyes, told them about the boy who went missing.  
  
William Van de Kamp’s parents – allegedly his parents, anyway, – pulled him out of school two hours early for a doctor’s appointment. They can be identified on the school’s surveillance camera. At 6:44 that evening, the parents were found dead and the boy gone. No known enemies, no debts, no ransom note, nothing. No record of an appointment exists with any of the family’s physicians. And both parents were seen at their jobs during the time they were also seen picking up their son.  
  
Then Skinner had pulled a snapshot from his pocket and set it on the table. Mulder had stared at in fascination. She had swallowed a scream.  
  
Scully puts her hands on the edge of the sink and leans her forehead against the cool glass. The boy’s face floats to the front of her vision. Her eyes, Charlie’s nose, Mulder’s mouth and wry smile. It’s William, of course it is, but she can’t let it be because then she has to save him. She has to acknowledge that her terrible sacrifice wasn’t enough. She has to admit that a primal part of her is relieved to be alive, to not be decomposing in Wyoming with her skull squeezed like an orange.  
  
Skinner confessed that he hadn’t planned to tell them, but Kenyan informants indicated the boy was being transported to somewhere in Saskatchewan, and promising details are pouring in all the time. There is every chance of saving him, Skinner said, and units had been mobilizing since word got out. They were invited to come, to help. To get their son back.  
  
She’d told Skinner to get the hell out of her house.  
  
A breeze wafts in through the open window and blows her hair around, long strands sticking to her lips. She flicks them away in irritation, annoyed that even her hair is unsuitable for the task at hand. It’s long enough to be grabbed and held like a rope, to catch and snag on things. She looks like a goddamned folk singer, her and Mulder both.  
  
Scully steps back to scrutinize herself in the mirror. She is still in good shape, but not the kind of physical condition she’d been in when the ability to incapacitate an armed assailant was a job requirement. It’s still hopeless, Kenyan informants or no. They’ve been out of the game for too long. She hasn’t shot anything more powerful than a .22 in years, and only then to scare the coyotes away from the chickens.  
  
She couldn’t save him when he was a baby, and she can’t save him now.  
  
The sense of defeat is miserable and lonely. How does Mulder still have the drive after so long? She wants nothing more than to crawl into her bed, pull up the covers, and wait for the merciful apocalypse.  
  
As she turns to leave the bathroom, the silver gleam of a utility knife in the shower stall catches her eye. She and Mulder have been replacing the bathroom tiles, and some require scoring and cutting. It’s been their project for a week.  
  
This is her life now, with him. They laugh and disagree and cook and eat and make love and reminisce about safe subjects like Tooms and Modell. He takes care of the property and she goes to work.  
  
Throwing starfish back into the sea.  
  
Scully looks at the knife again, at the shine of it, and crouches down in something like a trance. She picks it up, testing the dense metallic heft of it in her hand. It’s much lighter than her old Sig, but she can’t resist the impulse to echo Mulder’s posture downstairs. She sees her reflection and, despite feeling silly, likes what it shows. She almost recognizes herself.  
  
All the heartache over William, over Christian. And for what? She sets the knife in the sink, then gathers her hair at the nape of her neck with an elastic band. Perhaps it’s not too late.  
  
She picks the knife up again and brings it to the back of her head. Before she can change her mind, she begins sawing with the razor-sharp blade. After a moment, the ponytail comes away in her fingers, the remaining hair ragged against her jaw.  
  
She smiles.  
  
Scully goes downstairs. Mulder is at the table, poring over the documents Skinner left, tapping William’s picture against his palm. He looks up when she enters the room, then stares, his mouth hanging open.  
  
The scent of his skin is comforting as she closes the distance between them, and his callused hands feel like body armor when he slips them under her shirt and around her waist.  
  
Scully drops the severed ponytail on the file and kisses his head. “Let’s go save the fucking day,” she says.  
  
  
***


End file.
